


Kirchhoff Laws

by lechatnoir



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 20:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lechatnoir/pseuds/lechatnoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU - In which Q meets James underneath a stonework bridge in a park that is far to big and grand and it is a combination of cigarettes and lost journals that seem to tie everything together with the sound of a guitar being played echoing through the stones that they walk on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cigarettes and Amperes

> _
> 
> At any node (junction) in an electrical circuit, the sum of currents flowing into that node is equal to the sum of currents flowing out of that node, or:  
>  The algebraic sum of currents in a network of conductors meeting at a point is zero. - Kirchhoff's First Law 
> 
> _

He spends his days calculating and wondering how the human mind works - how they fit into an equation that the universe has set out to place them in and preachers rave about a deity that may or may not exist and it's a jumbled mess of wiring and coding and it's too much binary for him to handle, not while he groggily becomes alive again after drinking himself to sleep for the third night in a row.

(He can't handle the fact that his parents passed away only three days ago - bodies smashed like little birds torn to shreds - and surely there must be some sort of solution to this equation but there isn't )

Groggily, he sits up and fumbles around to put his glasses onto his face (they are a bit foggy and dirty and for some reason he thinks he can smell the scent of blood on his fingers but there isn't anything there ) before stumbling out of bed and almost face planting onto the floor because he's quite fine thanks.

It is a cold, spring afternoon, the rain batters against the window , and there is a small trail of smoke that curls around him as he gets up and lights a cigarette, sitting on the windowsill as the radio crackles and breaks the dead silence that weighs over the place.

_(it's currently cloudy and raining with the humidity levels reaching a 45% and there is a chance of thunderstor--....zzz...)_

 

ii.

He starts to wander around, walk through the streets , visit old art galleries that no one really pays any attention to , and slowly he starts to fade away into nothing more than a code, nine numbers that set him apart from everyone else and it seems as if no one really notices him anyway, just nine digits but if they ask he tells them to just call him 'Q' and they agree and that's the end of that.

He starts to write - it was something that his mother did, when she wasn't knitting or crocheting terribly warm hats for him to wear ( even though he hated hats in the first place, but he can't help but keep them in a box on the floor of his closet anyway) - he doesn't really understand it , the whole creative process that is filled with free form and and whimsy and he thinks that it shouldn't work- there's no definite answer so it should not be possible to figure out but he does, somewhat, and it is spider wick handwriting scribbling away at the pages of his moleskin as he sits in the park , oak trees and snowbells surrounding him in a quiet lull of peace.

Or so he thinks. 

iii.

He meets James by the bridge in the park on another humid day. This time it is sunny and warm and he can't help but stay a bit longer than he usually does and write a bit in his journal as he listens to the man play his guitar and sing - it's not fast or catchy, not really - it's slow and a bit lazy and relaxing and he reminds Q of a cat that has been out in the sun for too long.

(Needless to say, Q is intrigued by the man who seems to have a thousand masks at his disposal and yet his eyes are as clear as the slate colored sky and he muses to himself how one can be the way that James was. )

He doesn't notice that he starts to add a variable to his equation - he starts to visit the stonework bridge in the park every day. And his notebook starts to get filled up with words and numbers and sometimes he even attempts to sketch but those were on his good days .)


	2. Canopy Circuits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The conservation of energy oftentimes leads to a burst in energy if applied with the right amount of force. Or, where James and Q find themselves pondering over the fact that perhaps there should be less staring and more talking and wait, when did this notion settle in their minds?

> _The principle of conservation of energy implies that  
>  The directed sum of the electrical potential differences (voltage) around any closed network is zero. _

i.

The days seemed to pass by like blurs on a distorted Warhol painting, all colors and shades of grey that never seemed to quite actually make sense, at least, not to Q. 

(He thought in words and numbers, logical equations that mapped themselves out on paper like iridescent raindrops) 

He doesn't remember the exact moment that he decided he fell into a sort of puppy-love with the street artist whose name he only knew because of a tag that read 'Hello My Name Is : ______" and there was the name 'James' written on it in a black permanent marker, worn out and fading at the edges and yet Q thinks it can work, in some weird way.

(He blames Silva because she's always late for their little appointments and when she's not gossiping about the latest things that are going on in her life, she's raising a dainty eyebrow and looking at Q, seeing how self destructive he's being and _really_ it's not his fault that he can't exactly handle some sort of pressure points when they decided to all pile up on him all at once at a specific moment in his life.) 

Whether or not Q has the actual courage to admit to himself that he's falling for a complete stranger, well, that's an entirely different story.

ii.

They start to cross paths, Q and James. 

Well, in all actuality it's more like Q is a cat that likes to sunbathe in the sun and he only just so happens to get the most work done at a certain coordinate in the park and that just so happens to be a bench that's near the stonework bridge. 

(He tells himself it has nothing to do with the man who plays guitar from about eight in the morning till a little after four in the afternoon, whose notes and sounds are a source of confusion and he finds himself tapping his foot along with the tune, even though he doesn't know where it's from , or whether or not he's even tapping in time with the tune, but his foot moves on its own accord and he can't really do anything to stop it, not really)

Soon he's filling out the pages in his book - Silva says that it's a bit of a coping mechanism, how he can deal with the death of his parents by mapping everything out, like a equation, like a circuit. 

_But what does Silva know?_

She's pretty, with a job, and her parents are still around and she could probably climb her way up any cooperate ladder if she wanted to but no, she's happy to play it on the low-key side of life and hang out with a loser like Q.

(He has more pride than that to call himself a loser. He's not a loser, he simply has interests that not everyone may like and he's perfectly fine with being happy on his lonesome. Exactly, that is, if he knew what it felt like to be happy.) 

iii.

James notices the young man who sits on the bench near their little stonework bridge a few days after he loses his apartment and starts to perform out on the street, with the stonework bridge breathing a welcoming sigh as he played while people passed on by.

_(It's not 'ours' and you don't even know his name)_

At first, he thinks he's waiting for a girl to take on a date, or a friend to go off and have a few drinks at the local pub that's not too expensive for a college kid.

_(You look like a creep if you keep on staring at him like that, Bond. Besides, how the hell do you know if he's even in college in the first place? )_

When neither one of those options work out, James figures that he might just be enjoying the day, watching the sun flicker through the tree leaves that make a emerald canopy of leaves above him and it's quite pretty, how the light seems to illuminate him and it's almost as if he's staring at a angel.

(At this point, he thinks he's gone far too long without a drink so he unscrews the top of his flask and takes a swing, the scotch burning down his throat like an old friend coming to greet him with comfort and a bit of a pinch, just to kickstart the old engine of his) 

iv.

It sort of fell into a pattern - Q would get there at around nine in the morning, with a cup of coffee in his hand and a butter crossaint in his other, with his trusty old notebook tucked away under his arm, and he'd have his breakfast while listening to James play, who simply nodded and tipped his head in greeting while Q hestitantly smiled - ( _smiled!_ ) and opened up his book to pour out the ideas that swimmed around in his head.

During the morning hours, James played slow ol' jazz songs. And if he couldn't remember the title of them, he'd do a acoustic slow version of the foxtrot, or the Charleston. It was something that earned him smiles from a few people who were swept away by the morning rush hour that seemed to open up and come out of nowhere, snapping and clawing and dragging everyone down into a mundane, monotone cycle of loathing for their little cubicle jobs. Sometimes, he'd get his best tips if the businessmen and women were in the right mood and they were cutting across the park just to get to the nearest bus stop or subway station and hightail it on over to their offices.

(Sometimes he saved up a bit and he had enough for a real feast of an entire bottle of scotch and maybe a bagel or something. ) 

v.  
They didn't actually start talking until about a month of Q visiting James' little bridge. 

It started with a 'Good Morning' and then they both realized that they were quite curious about each other - Q had thought about all of the possibilities of why James was here instead of prowling around some fancy hotel or restaurant with beautiful women on each of his arms and high-tailored suits that suited his frame and physique - and James had figured that maybe the kid had some time to kill before heading on off to his morning classes and all that jazz. 

(Q didn't stop writing, after that. He even started to sketch more, and while at first his hand was shaky and lines messy, they gradually improved until his sketches were something of a second nature to him. It helped him get the anxiety out, when it clogged up his mental processing systems and he can't find the proper proxy code to bypass it) 

Slowly but surely, they had learned that their names were Q and James Bond, that Q had a few hard patches in his life but he seemed to be on the road to recovery (at least, that's what Q tells James), that James seemed to have gambled away his last earnings a while ago and now he ends up doing odd jobs for a complete bitch whose name is M and he doesn't know why but he does and sometimes when he has the free time, he comes here and plays, to earn a little bit of change or something to keep himself sustained and to see how long he can last before he can come crawling back to her terribly decorated apartment, with that stupid porcelain paperweight of a bulldog whose back is painted the color of the English flag that seems to want him dead despite being an inanimate object.

(He claims that his eyes burn whenever he sees it and Q laughs, before handing him a cup of coffee, black, with one sugar, and James thinks that he likes the way Q's face scrunches up and his eyes crinkle when he laughs. He also thinks that maybe he wants to kiss him but he's not nearly intoxicated enough to be having those sort of thoughts at nine in the morning on a Tuesday. )


	3. Parallel Transmitters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's rain and Q wonders if his best friend had died until one very wet James stumbled through his doorway

I.

He remembers a smile and a greeting of 'hello' as he scribbles the last derivative of that equation which he read in that quantum physics book, sixty seventh line down the page, second paragraph , page fifty two, second hand revised edition, hardcover an signed by the author.

The blank white page curls and bends underneath the strength of his pen hacking and slashing in red and black and wondering why he's such a mess this morning as he stumbled out of bed, hair sticking up in all directions like a crow's nest and there are bags underneath his eyes that he doesn't remember why or how they got there, but there are a pile of scattered papers everywhere as he made his way through the morning cold floor of his flat, feet freezing because the heater wasn't working again and really he doesn't remember the last time he actually ate something but he figured he didn't need that much food anyway - he could survive on tea and coffee for days on end if he willed himself to do it. 

He does remember blindly dialing Eve Moneypenny and lamenting to her over the fact that there was one very attractive stranger slash street performer to whom they have gotten past the whole 'You seem to be quite familiar around here actually, hello' sort of phase and are now in the 'I recognize your face so I think it is only polite that I greet you , but fuck you an your grey glass eyes that seem to fucking shine as if everything amuses you when there's a bottle nearby and _fuck_ if they aren't something of a bit of a turn on for him . He might have also gushed out things like how he wants to feel those calloused, guitar playing hands against his skin but he might have also been drunk out of his mind and it might have been sometime around three in the goddamn morning and he's pretty sure Eve doesn't get paid enough for her job and the fact that she's his best friend and deals with the shit that he may spit out on occasion when he's hopeless as fuck.

(Although he thinks he gets cut a little bit of slack when he goes after the last guy on the ever growing list of "Douchebags that dumped Eve" and manages to hack into his systems and accounts and get a little bit of revenge money wise and snickers to himself as he clicks the 'Proceed to Check Out' button on the screen and wait as the shipments of venomous spiders gets sent out and he meets up with Eve with a smile on his face and a kiss on her cheek as he spins her underneath the orange glow of the lamplight , hazy against the steady flow of traffic of people who are out for a summer evening stroll.)

ii. 

James greets him with a wave and a swing of his flask one misty summer morning. 

Q thinks that James' eyes couldn't stand out even more in the misty dewdrop filled morning but it happens that they do and he wonders if this is some sort of cruel punishment but he just laughs and they make small talk - all lies and hidden glances that they think the other won't notice but it's really quite oblivious to anyone who would pass by them and Q wanted to go and hide because dear god this was embarrassing.

He doesn't notice the fact that he can feel a pair of eyes watching him as he writes in his book - they're not intrusive or odd , just warm - they eventually fade into something that feels like an old familiar blanket that keeps you company in hard times. 

He doesn't notice that the hours slip away and Eve comes all laughter and pencil skirts and she figured she'd come and pick him up for their scheduled appointment and he doesn't realize that he forgot his book until much later when it starts to pour and he remembers that he had to double check something that e wrote in it before there was a bolt of lightening and a roaring thunder and he prayed that no one decided to read that page dedicated to the street performer named James and what if he actually read it oh god --

He thinks he's going to panic because what if he was found out and there were about a hundred or so of scenarios of what could go wrong and oh god-

His panic was halted when there was a knock at his door and one very dry notebook and one very wet stranger stumble in.


End file.
